10 Tips to Prevent Identify Theft While Traveling

Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, you need to mind your internet usage and keep identity theft at bay. These 10 tips will help keep you and your money secure while jet setting throughout the United States and the rest of the world.

1. Protect Your Critical Documents

If you must travel with a Social Security card or passport while traveling – and its a pretty good bet that most of you have to – pay close attention to those documents. If you don’t feel safe with a traditional wallet, get money belt that you can attach to your person. Or utilize the hotel safe. Be sure that you are in a trusted, well-known hotel chain. Don’t test out the security of that cute B&B you found on the coast of Brazil.

2. Be Skeptical of Any WiFi You Come Across

Even hotel WiFi. You never know what kind of online security standards (or lack thereof) your hotel has in place — and identity theft is only a click away. That’s why a VPN is such a smart play for a frequent traveler. Provided you pick the right service, you can be confident in the security of your Internet usage.

3. Use a Dedicated Travel Email Address

Creating a email address to use while you are gallivanting around the globe will keep your work and/or email safe from unauthorized access.

4. Mind that Cell Phone

Set a password on your phone so if you lose it, no one can access it. Leaving your phone unprotected is a recipe for disaster, particularly if you are in a foreign country. Identity theft is easy to accomplish when a sinister mind gets a hold of your mobile device.

5. Change Your Passwords When You Get Home

Some hackers will wait a few weeks to infiltrate your accounts, when you might be a little less diligent. Create new passwords when you get back, or, think up some trip-specific passwords that you use on the road and then never return to.

6. Check Your Credit

It might make sense to keep a casual eye on your accounts and your credit report when you are traveling. But, when you get back home, conduct a more thorough review of all your finances, and be on the look out for suspicious activity for a few weeks post-trip identity theft.

7. Stay Away from Convenience Store ATMs

Plan your cash usage carefully. Only take out money from ATMs at branches of reputable banks. Keep your card info out of the clutches of skimmers and hackers by avoiding the single ATM next to the ice machine at a shady beer store.

8. Don’t Use the Hotel Computer

Even if you are staying at a well-known chain, don’t take the chance of using the well-trod business center desktops. Accessing any of your personal accounts, from social media to email to your bank, is fraught with danger. You could forget to logout or the machines themselves could be compromised.

9. Use a Virtual Private Network

Accessing the internet through your own virtual private network is the safest method to protect your information while traveling. And when you have an account with a reputable provider, you know that your data is not being stored and your personal info is not at risk.

10. Use Credit, Not Debit

Credit cards generally have much more robust fraud protection than debit cards. And a stolen debit card can give a nefarious thief nearly immediate access to your cash. Recovering stolen cash from your account is much harder than disputing inappropriate purchases on your credit card statement.